Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is important to consider because it’s one of the most effective ways to acquire traffic. To enhance your SEO, we recommend that you write meta descriptions for each page and post.
What’s a meta description?
A meta description is a HTML tag you can set for a post or page of your website. In it, you can use roughly 155 characters to describe what your page is about. Meta descriptions help generate user engagement from search engines. Although not visible to website viewers, the meta description tag plays a crucial role in search as it often appears beneath the page title on a search engine results page, influencing the searcher’s decision to click or not.
Key considerations for writing your meta descriptions:
- Each page needs a uniquely worded description.
- Use action-oriented, benefits-driven wording to compel the reader to engage.
- Use your focus keyphrase.
- Make sure the description matches the page’s content.
- If the page focuses on two core keyword phrases, write one sentence for each.
Instructions:
Once your website is live, you can edit the meta description on each page and post.
- Log in to your WordPress Dashboard.
- On the left-hand side menu, go to Pages or Posts.
- Scroll down to the Yoast SEO section.
- Under SEO, you’ll see Meta Description and can enter your description here. Optionally, you can also create a Focus Keyphrase at the top of this section (see below to learn more).
- Under SEO Analysis, you can read tailored advice to enhance your SEO. Although we recommend you take on board these recommendations, it is ultimately up to you.
- Click Update at the top of the page.
What else can I do to improve SEO?
This section also includes a focus keyphrase, which is the search term (the word or phrase someone enters into Google) you want a page or post to rank for most. When people search for that phrase, you want them to find your content.
When you enter that, Yoast SEO will create a range of suggestions on how you can optimise the page to be found for that search term by looking under the SEO Analysis tab.